146 
It was hoped early in the year that funds might become avail- 
able for sepa his wooden bridge by a permanent stone one, 
for which designs have already been approved, but the amount 
of money rae by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment 
for construction work during 1905 was not sufficient to per mit 
this very desirable piece of work being undertaken. 
A LOST SPECIES OF BEGONIA APPARENTLY 
REDISCOVERED. 
In the course of Mr. Nash's exploration of Hayti in the sum- 
mer of 1903, he collected seeds and herbarium specimens of a 
begonia growing on open banks on Mount Maleuvre at an alti- 
tude of about 2,500 feet. Plants were raised from this seed, and 
from these the accompanying illustration was made 
The plant is of particular interest on account of having almost 
orbicular leaves, showing very little of the lop-sided character so 
clearly in evidence in the leaves of most begonias, and was not 
at once recognized. Recently in looking over the plates of 
Plumier’s “ Plantarum Americanarum,” edited by Burmann, pub- 
lished in 1755, a work containing the earliest descriptions and 
illustrations of many plants of the West Indies, I noticed on plate 
5 of that work, the figure of a begonia which, I think, was cer- 
tainly intended for the plant collected nearly 150 years later by 
Mr. Nash. The plates of Plumier are rather crudely drawn, but 
the description given by him on pp. 33 and 34 of the work seem 
to agree perfectly well with Mr. Nash’s plant. This figure by 
Plumier was made the basis of Begonia rotundifolia Lamarck, 
Encycl. 1: 394. 1783, who states that the “plant grew in 
South America, attached to rocks or the trunks of trees.” There 
is no evidence cited that Lamarck saw a specimen. In the 
revision of the genus Begonia by Alphonse de Candolle (Prodro- 
mus 15: 395), &. rotundifolia is recorded as a dubious sy ecies 
of eee origin, no specimen of it having oe seen by him. 
If my determination of the plant, by the comparison of Plumier’s 
plate and description, is correct, the supposition of Lamarck that 
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